In a White Room
by Bao Blossom
Summary: Sherlock retreats to his mind palace after the events of "His Last Vow" to visit a room he rarely sets foot in. One shot. Spoilers for Series 3.


So, it's been a while since I was inspired enough to write for anything. From the state of this fic you will see that I am woefully rusty. Also, I was unaware of anything Sherlock until about 48 hours ago. And now this fic is happening. So, I apologize beforehand for the "weirdness" of it. It's quite hard to write for a genius.

Disclaimer: I don't own the series or the wonderful characters, I just like to make them dance in my mind. Spoilers to all of series 3, please read at your own risk.

One last thing… I am Mexican; so please don't hold my lack of understanding of English colloquialisms (especially British ones) against me. :/ Hehe.

**In a White Room**

oooooooooooooooooo

"Why are you here?" his deep voice bounced off the walls of the empty white room with a sharp echo.

The shy pathologist cringed under his inquisitive glare, and did her best to stand firm. "You brought me here," she said looking around at the boarded windows of the small, dimly lit room. "You know what comes to this place."

"Puzzles," he said matter-of-factly. "You were never a puzzle before, however."

"That's not true," she told him bowing her face but keeping his gaze. "You brought me here a long time ago, when you found out that I was in love with you."

He pursed his lips as her clothes changed into the horrid looking maroon jumper and dreadful khaki trousers she'd had on when he realized. The memory played on the wall behind him like a reel from an old home movie.

"_Tell me what's wrong."_

_She made little effort to hide the emotions fleeting across her face. Fear, concern, the hopeful absurdity of Sherlock Holmes trusting Molly Hooper to save his life. But no, those were just his emotions reflecting back at him through her eyes._

"_Molly, I think I'm going to die," he was as dramatic as possible, searching her face hungrily for the reaction she would have. Testing his knowledge of everything he knew about Molly Hooper. _

_Astoundingly, gratefully, she was still capable of surprising him. She stood fast, against the accelerating beat of her heart, the panic that flashed in her eyes, the tears that threatened to spill upon contemplating his death. She stood fast and said in a voice much too firm to be her own, "What do you need?"_

_For some reason his own pulse grew quick. Was she serious? Did she actually mean it? "If I wasn't everything that you think I am, everything that I think I am... would you still want to help me?"_

_There was a moment of contemplation in her eyes; a brief second in which she weighed the consequences of his statement. She hadn't just blurted out her answer, she thought about his words, considered them and somehow, (idiotically or miraculously, he didn't know) she stood fast. It was't a rash gut feeling. It was a decision. _

"What do you need?" she asked again in the tone straight from his memory. He turned away from her inquisitive gaze and instead turned to look at one of the windows in which the boards had been removed. It would have given the room more than enough light, if it hadn't been for the black curtains he insisted on keeping over it. Hiding the realization that she loved him.

"The last time you came to see me was after Moriarty, right after the…" her cheeks turned pink, "Right before you left London."

"It was just a kiss," he said tiredly.

"Then why were you so confused by it that you came here to figure out what it meant?"

His eye twitched. His mental projections had a nasty knack for being blunt, and truthful. "There was nothing to figure out. It was just gratitude for what you'd done for me, and maybe an apology."

"Seems all of your kisses for me are laced with an apology then," she somewhat smiled.

All the kisses. A still photograph of Christmas 3 years ago and his first and only case with her upon his return from the dead were projected on opposite walls. Both soft pecks, and yes, both laced with apologies. He didn't particularly feel the need to remember the third kiss however.

"But it wasn't just that, was it?" she shook her head and looked at the big board covering the large arched window behind her. "The boards only come down for the truth, you know how it goes. You _were_ grateful to me, and you _were_ sorry for leaving the way you did," she pointed to a sliver of light in one of the corners of the window, "but that was no peck on the cheek. However lovely it may have felt, it was your decision to kiss me, like _that_," she blushed furiously, "that fuelled your confusion."

He scoffed and began to pace in front of her. "I'm not here to talk about that night,"

"You can't just disconnect the uncomfortable parts about your interactions with me. You're never going to solve the puzzle like that. You need to see all the pieces for it to make sense. Isn't that why you're here? Are you still confused from last time? Or is it something else? Something new?"

_Something painful happened to his face, Molly looked furious. He heard another crack as it dawned on him that tiny Molly Hooper had just slapped him... twice. Molly Hooper did not slap Sherlock Holmes, twice. But the last one, the third blow was damn near impossible to comprehend. _

_What? Wait what? She couldn't have just slapped him three times. It didn't make any sense. Why was she so angry that she had to slap him a third time? He was high, she was mad that he was high, but that justified one blow, two was already baffling enough. But three... The only thing that made sense about having received three blows was if something else had already made her upset. He could not be the only cause of 3 slaps. His using couldn't be that big of a deal to her, right?_

_Then he remembered watching her put on her gloves as he handed her his cup. Of course, _

"_I'm sorry your engagement is over," he said almost accusingly._

"Sherlock. Tell me what's wrong," she said in the same tone as that night. How he liked to remember that strength in her voice.

But it was laced with something more, "You're always worried, always concerned. It annoys me." He began to pace again.

"It frightens you," she corrected.

"Fear _is_ annoying. Useless, crippling sentiment. I certainly have better things to occupy my mind with than with anxiety over hurting a smitten pathologist."

"In love, I'm not smitten," she corrected again. He rolled his eyes as the black curtain ruffled, shaken by an imaginary wind.

"Why are you here then?" she asked following him around the room with her eyes.

"In love..." He glared almost angrily. "Why did you refuse to be my new partner then?"

"Did you want me to be?" She asked hopefully. His eye twitched and she shook her head. "Why are you asking me things you already know?"

"Just answer the question," he barked impatiently.

"Because I was engaged to another man! I hardly think that being around someone I was still in love with would have been good for my sanity."

"Why would you get engaged to someone else if you were still in love with me?"

"It had been a year since I last heard from you. He wanted me. It was nice to be wanted."

"He wasn't right for you."

"He was a good man."

"I never said he wasn't. He just wasn't right for you."

"Even if he had been, I would have returned to you."

He shook his head at the awful thought of robbing her of her happiness. "You don't know that."

She offered him a gentle smile and watched him huff away. "You slapped me when you found out I had been using again, for a case."

"Three times," she nodded.

"The first?"

"Anger," she said as the memory flashed momentarily behind her.

"The second?"

"Fear." He saw his face snap back at her blow.

"The third?"

This time the memory reel didn't focus on him, but rather paused on the eyes of the distraught looking pathologist. She remained silent knowing the realization would disturb him.

"The third?" he asked getting in her face.

"Betrayal," the slap played out in slow motion, her face in the reel growing sadder with each passing second. "Disappointment."

"It was for a case," he said ignoring the pictures on the wall and staring her down. "It was for a case!"

"Sherlock, you're missing the point!" She didn't shrink to his voice this time, "I trusted you enough to risk my career, my life, my future for you. I thought you would have trusted me enough to tell me about something like this."

A small splinter of wood broke away from the board to his left. Of course. The third slap. It had hurt her when she thought he didn't trust her. His expression softened as he stepped up close to her.

"Why didn't you trust me?" she asked sadly, "You know what I'm capable of doing for you."

The board to his left splintered and broke away. Revealing a small bright circular window.

"No," he said gazing intently at her. "That's exactly why I didn't tell you. Magnussen was dangerous. If you got involved… I didn't want you to get hurt."

"Well that turned out great then, didn't it?" Her cheeks reddened but the tone of her voice was strong. "I'll bet that's how Mary justified not telling John as well."

"That's just proves my point," Sherlock protested.

"Why?"

"Because Mary is a bloody assassin. She knew John. She knew he would have done something stupid to save her. He's in love."

"Like I'm in love with you?"

He cringed. She'd asked it as a question but somehow it felt more like a confession. Oh God, could it be true? Could Molly be just as in love with him as John was with Mary? Molly stepped over to the black curtain and began pulling it aside.

"Don't. That's a very uncomfortable thought."

"Why? It never used to bother you before. You manipulated me unabashed for your own convenience. You never intentionally set out to hurt me but the idea of using my feelings for your own benefit didn't bother you enough to stop doing it. What do you think the Fall was?"

"No," he said immediately rounding on her, "I meant what I said to you before the Fall. It had just, never occurred to me. You did count, you were important, but somehow you were right. You were important because you weren't."

Her brows furrowed and she shook her head slightly, "What?"

"Don't you see? You gave me the answer in those three little words. The fact that you pointed it out to me was disconcerting, and-

"_I don't count."_

"... shameful."

She rolled her eyes and looked up to him, her face dripping with scepticism.

"It was," he said firmly "I'm not the devil, I knew it was far less than someone like you deserved. But then, I realized just how important I had made you by pretending not to care, by pushing you away, and taking you for granted."

She raised a brow, "You weren't pretending."

"Well I wasn't doing it intentionally,"

"Yes you were. You found my feelings for you repellent."

"That's a bit harsh," he said with a tinge of shame.

"Distasteful, then."

He shook his head to rid himself of the vileness of his prior thoughts of the doctor. "That's not the point. The point is... I had underestimated you in the exact same way that Moriarty had. But you gave me a glimpse and I saw you, for the first time I saw exactly who you were to me. And suddenly, finally, I had the upper hand. I had you."

"_Sherlock,"_

_He looked up from the list of cadavers on the computer screen to the tired looking pathologist next to him. She had been incredibly calm and focused as he discussed the specifics of the situation, all 13 possible outcomes and what he wanted her to do for each one. They had even discussed his intentions for the "holiday" he was to take after the successful completion of the plan tomorrow._

"_You'll come back right? After, when you get rid of the web, when you're sure it's safe for you and John and everyone else. You'll come back."_

_He regarded her stammering with a lot more patience than he normally would have. After all she had just agreed to risk her life for him. "If I am still wanted here."_

_She rolled her eyes as if the possibility of him thinking anything else was preposterous. "Right."_

_He gave a short sigh and pushed back the chair he had been in for the last hour, checking, double checking. He had done all he could, now it would be up to Molly. And he trusted her. _

"_There are things I need to take care of back at home. I think I'd better be off for tonight," he told her. "Hopefully, the next time you see me, I'll be a dead man."_

_She did not even try to smile at his attempted humour, but simply nodded in understanding. He threw on his coat, put on his scarf and adjusted the collar of his jacket. "'Thank you' are words far too miserable to express my current level of gratitude Molly. But they are all I have." _

_Her lips twitched into what could have been a smile, but the gravity of the situation didn't let her get that far. He smiled back at her. When had that happened? When had he stopped having to make himself smile in front of her, and simply quite involuntarily done so?_

"_Sherlock," she called out just as he opened the door to leave. The tone and slight shake of her voice told him it would probably be easier for her to say what she was about to say without him looking directly at her. _

"_If I," she took in a sharp breath and fumbled around for the words, "If I do this for you, whatever scenario plays out. There's a condition, well, no, not a condition, just- Can I ask... I need you to do me a favour as well."_

_His patience with her stuttering had its limits however, especially when he was wound up with stress and rather curious to know what she could possibly want from him. A date? A kiss? A promise of something he would not want to give her?_

"_If I promise to kill you, will you promise to stay alive?"_

He smiled at the memory. "Moriarty didn't even give a second thought to the most important player of the "Lazarus" plan, that's why it worked."

She held his gaze as Sherlock looked at the detail in his mental projection of Molly. The slight downward tilt of her face making her eyes seem childlike when she looked up at him. The way her nose had that small lift at its end and that little divot in her upper lip. Even the little wrinkles around her eyes.

"Why must you love me Molly Hooper?" he asked softly, bringing a hand up to her flushed cheek.

"Why don't you feel like you deserve it?" she asked tenderly.

A splinter of wood dried away and let in a beam of light through the big window behind her. He pulled away from her and turned his back to the new revelation.

"You're dodging the question," he accused.

"No, that's what you're doing," she smiled knowingly. "I only answer questions that are important."

He sighed and did not turn to face her as he spoke. "Because I cannot give you what you want. And I was serious when I told you I wanted you to be happy. I will disappoint you or disappear again. I already have, by killing Magnessun. And you are important enough to me now that I care about hurting you. You are too good a person to deserve anything less than absolute bliss. And I couldn't offer you that."

"Absolute bliss doesn't exist," she somewhat pleaded.

"Neither does love." He stole a glance at her reaction and saw that Molly now appeared in a pair of baggy sweats and an old baggy Cambridge top. When he stayed with her, this is what she'd wear to bed. When he'd said goodbye to her, weeks after the fall, this is what she had been wearing. Her hair loose over her back and shoulders, the evident gleam of unshed tears in her eyes.

_She stood at the door of her apartment, her eyes still blinking away the sleep with a look of confusion mingled with concern. He cut the distance between them not quickly, not slowly, just certainly and placed his lips over hers. It took her a considerable amount of time to understand what he had just done. Much more time than it took her to reciprocate. _

_She melted into him and opened slowly for his tongue, which until she accepted, he hadn't even known was trying to breach her soft lips. He pushed, she stroked, and for an impossible moment she was not Molly Hooper. She was just, his._

_Her hands found his nape and he pulled away from the intoxicatingly pleasurable feeling. He slid his hands out of her hair, unaware of when they had even gotten there and smiled down at that impossibly flabbergasted face of hers._

_Then he turned, away from the woman who had saved his life and started bounding down the stairs._

"_You're leaving, aren't you!" she said in between a gasp and a sigh._

_It was not a question, it was an accusation. At least she certainly made it sound like one in that panicky voice of hers. _

"_For good now, you're…" _

_There was a silence in which he heard her breathing even out again and he tried to ignore the steadily increasing rate of his own pulse. _

"_Thank you for everything Molly Hooper. I'll try to keep my end of the deal." _

She hugged herself in pain. "You couldn't love me?"

It was odd that his own mind was making him so uncomfortable. Her tears felt like small saltine bullets. "Of course I could, I just don't."

She looked up at him in shock as the boarded window behind her splintered loudly.

"What?"

He heard his words, feeling as if someone else had said them and shook his head vigorously. "No, I... I am not in love with you Molly," he said forcefully.

"Yes, I got that part," she said rounding on him for a change in that cheery yellow dress she had worn to John and Mary's wedding. Minus the atrocious bow, thankfully. "What you said before though…"

The board over the window behind her cracked again.

"Could you, could you love me?" she asked again.

The board behind her gave a mighty groan and he suddenly didn't want to be here anymore. Mental palace be damned, he had to get out of here. He turned on his heels and made for the door, but it seemed his mind was not in a generous mood tonight.

"Of course you're not in love with her," chimed in the Woman blocking the doorway. "You don't believe in love, remember?"

He sighed and turned his back on Molly.

"Sherlock," Molly begged. "But, you've seen it! You've seen love in John and in Mary and in me! You know it's real!"

He couldn't turn to look at Molly with the woman in here. What was she doing here? "I may have been in love with you," he admitted dejectedly to Irene. "I don't feel for Molly what I felt about you."

Irene laughed, "Well of course you don't, look at me, and look at her. Clearly there is no comparison. You wanted me, longed for me. You still do."

"You shouldn't be in here," Molly pouted angrily from beside the boarded window.

"That, little girl, is exactly my point."

Both Molly and Sherlock followed her movement inside as she stood next to the pathologist. The woman took a slender hand to Molly's face and traced the line of her lips with her fingers.

"Why am I here Sherlock?" She asked pulling her body in close to Molly's. "I am the woman who woke something dormant and powerful in you. Has she woken anything inside you?"

"I woke his compassion," she said challengingly. "It became important to Sherlock not to hurt me."

A board on the window to his right flew off.

Irene smiled. "He missed me so much when I was gone that he risked his life to save me. Has he risked his life to save you? Did he remember _you_ when he was gone?"

Sherlock recalled a very specific" mission" just before he left, while he was staying in her flat. A small branch of Moriarty's London network had caught wind of a familiar looking man following the pathologist home from his own Memorial service. It was his fault, he was too narcissistic not to go. It wasn't difficult to put two and two together, and when he realized they would come after Molly he did something, er, less than intelligent. He got lucky, they were a small group and thankfully he got there before the information disseminated. Not without a few cracked ribs that turned out to be very difficult to hide from her that night. That's when he'd decided to leave.

"Yes," he said to those hopeful brown eyes. He had never been quite so angry with himself as when he realized that he had put her in danger. He needed to protect her, he felt he owed her that much at least.

"So why am I here Sherlock?" Irene interrupted, curling a strand of Molly's hair in her fingers. "The woman, the only one who managed to steal your heart, being compared to the little Morgue mouse?"

His pulse quickened when he realized she had been leading him into a trap. A trap he knew the endgame of. The board over the window behind the two women finally burst away in a mess of splinters and sawdust. He turned away from the light as quickly as he could. From the pattern on the floor of rich broken colours, he assumed that a stained glass window had been behind the board.

"Why was I nowhere in your final thoughts when you'd been shot? But you trusted her to bring you back from the fringe of death?" Irene continued mercilessly.

"S-she's a doctor, my mind made a simple association," he justified.

"John is a doctor," Molly offered annoyingly.

"Yes darling, an actual practicing physician unlike you, but Watson couldn't save Sherlock when he's the one who needed saving."

Molly turned to look at Irene and for a moment they held each other's gaze. The woman smiled one last time at the pathologist and then turned away, gliding towards Sherlock and slithering around him. "Oh Sherlock, how unbelievably arrogant of you to think you knew me well enough to fall in love after only a few short encounters. Do you remember what "loving me" did to you?"

Her hand grazed his face gently, much more contact than he had ever really had with her. "People like you and I Sherlock, we are no good with sentiment. My love for you made me weak. Showed my mistakes and cost me my future. But people like Molly, like John, love-"

"Love turns them into the strongest people I've ever known," he finished for her.

Irene shrugged. "Mary did her best to protect John, but in the end it was his love that saved her. Love in not a crutch for her anymore, as it still is for you."

She cradled herself into his chest and continued, "Just as John craved adventure and excitement in his partner, Mary craved normalcy and compassion. A tether to the life she was previously disconnected from.

"So," she backed away and lifted his chin with a slender finger. "What do _you_ crave Sherlock Holmes? You are always saving people. John, Mary, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade. But whom do you trust to save you?"

His brother, much to his horror appeared in front of them smiling annoyingly.

"Oh, he doesn't count!" said Irene angrily throwing herself in front of Mycroft.

He looked back to Molly as everyone else in the room vanished. His eyes took in the sight of her and then he saw the beautiful stained glass window behind her. An anatomically correct model of a heart, halfway through being dissected by a gloved hand and a surgeon's scalpel. He arched a brow. How delightfully subtle.

"Molly," he barely whispered.

"You're not in love with me Sherlock Holmes," she said placidly.

"No."

"But you could be, one day. You could fall in love for the first time, with me."

He gave a defeated sigh. "That doesn't mean I will."

She smiled meekly at him as he sighed in defeat and made for the door. Her room was no longer small, dark and bland. It was full of light and colour. There was still one window that was boarded up, but he'd had enough revelations for one sitting. He was tired, and she was right, he didn't want to do anything to strengthen his feelings for her.

"Sherlock," she said in an uncharacteristically strong voice.

He looked back from the doorway and felt his breath catch in his chest.

"Just because you don't want to fall in love doesn't mean you won't." She was wearing her lab coat again. Only her lab coat. No gloves, no shoes, no clothes, not even her hair tie. Just her standard lab coat with one button fastened below her navel and that shade of pink lipstick she'd only put on once. "It's a weakness we all share."

He almost felt compelled to stay. Almost.

"The decision to be happy is not as easy to make as you think," he said sadly.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"-then Sherlock?"

Sherlock opened his eyes to find his brother looking down at him from the other side of the locked door with more than slight irritation.

"What?"

"I'm glad your cell is comfortable enough that you can visit your mind maze even in the middle of a conversation with me."

"It's a palace, not a maze. I'm a bit more organized than that." Sherlock clarified, not bothering to get up from his bed.

"Yes, well, please let me know if I can offer you a lobotomy to tidy up the place; you were gone for quite a while just now."

"Surprising, considering the wide range of entertainment I have in here."

"Only the best for my dear brother."

A hole would have been speaking too nicely of the jail cell he had been in for the last 3 days.

"Dr. Hooper is upstairs. Shall I let her down to see you?"

Right. Mycroft had told him 20 minutes ago that she was on her way to see him. That had been what started his introspective trip to the room Molly Hooper occupied in his palace.

"No."

Mycroft was not the least bit surprised at his refusal to see the jittery pathologist. But Sherlock's expression didn't betray the reason why he would rather not see her. Still, Mycroft wasn't an idiot. He was well aware of her involvement in taking down Moriarty. And Sherlock had become quite sentimentally predictable since his involvement with Watson.

"Are you sure? Your trial is tomorrow and after that I cannot guarantee your visitation rights."

"That's the idea," Sherlock said propping his arms under his head.

Mycroft had to admit that this was the harshest kindness he had ever extended to his brother. Of course he already knew how the trail would go tomorrow. His little brother had killed a man. It was simply a matter of weighing the two (legal) options they had. He could let his brother get convicted of murder and rot in a London jail. For someone like Sherlock, even 5 years would be too much. His brain would slowly deteriorate past boredom to the point of insanity and eventually self-destruction. Or he could give him 6, maybe 7 months with his help, living his last days in a fury of intellectually stimulating life and death situations. And who knows, he had proved quite proficient at faking his own death before. Who's to say Mycroft wouldn't turn a blind eye when identifying his "brother" on another stainless steel slab. The thought made his stomach turn, in spite of himself.

He would never forgive Sherlock for getting himself into this absurd situation. For what? Sentiment.

"Well that's good, as I've told her to leave 10 minutes ago," he said in a slightly bored voice. "She did leave this for you however."

He looked up, curious for the first time since his brother had gotten here. He'd noticed nothing out of the ordinary about his brother's proximity when he arrived, Mycroft always smelled of cologne and tobacco. But as he turned back and saw him take a smooth drag of a Winston red, he understood.

"I have to say, I rather like the reds, even if I prefer something lighter. Very smooth finish. I can see why you are fond of them."

He didn't dignify his brother's taunts with a response.

"Quite enjoyable." He muttered taking another deep drag. "Shame there's no smoking in your cell."

He hoped Mycroft choked on the delicious smoke. He had only smoked once in Molly's presence, leave it to her to remember exactly the brand and colour he preferred.

"Don't you have other people's lives to ruin?" asked Sherlock turning his back on his brother and balling up on his bed.

"Just yours at the moment, brother dear."

ooooooooooooooooo

So, wow, I'm writing again… sort of. I apologize if this fic seemed a bit, um, disjointed. I wrote it in parts. Literally, wrote the beginning, then the climax, then the middle, and the end just sort of… appeared. Suspiciously. Originally this fic had no flashbacks or "memory reels", but I figured they made sense in this context and to tie in this whole Frankenstein-ish creation.

Writing inside someone's head gives you a lot of freedom to do stuff. Too much freedom. I might have gone overboard. This story could have done with some major beta-ing but I've been away from writing for a really long time, and now I don't know anyone on the site anymore (sadness)

A lot of the memories you saw in this piece were actually ideas for even more Sherlolly fics I'd like to expand on. But I promise I won't publish those without a proper beta. PS: if someone would like to beta _this_ fic, I'd be more than happy to republish it. I probably will regardless, when enough time passes and I am no longer saturated by it. Hehe...

Anywho. I hope you enjoyed, Cheers to those who got my reference to Cream, and if you didn't, don't worry, you're probably not as ancient as I am.


End file.
